A law enforcement officer, body guard, or the like must be able to draw his handgun easily and quickly. When in plain clothes, it is also important that the handgun be concealed by being carried in an unobtrusive spot. For that reason, shoulder holsters are popular which fit underneath a coat generally in an area of the arm pit where their bulk is not easily recognized. The shoulder holster must allow quick and easy handgun draw, yet the holster must secure the handgun during strenuous activity. The holster also must assure that the strenuous activity does not tend to cock the weapon for accidental discharge should the safety be left off at times when immediate use is contemplated.
A typical shoulder holster is shown by BOOTH in U.S. Pat. No. 2,579,782. In a BOOTH holster, the weapon is carried in the conventional barrel-down location. To remove the handgun from the Booth holster requires lifting the handgun from the holster. This lifting is awkward, especially when a tight-fitting jacket is being worn. To overcome this awkwardness, some shoulder holsters release the handgun to the front or rear. A front opening shoulder holster is shown in BIANCHI, et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,084,734 where an internal spring within the sheath provides squeezing side force to retain the weapon in the holster by means of friction. The amount of weapon retaining side force depends in large measure upon the design of the weapon and therefore a single holster design is rarely suitable for handguns of different styles. Also, a relatively heavy spring is required to generate sufficient friction and the holster must extend over the entire length of the weapon to apply the friction. This makes such holsters relatively heavy and bulky. Therefore, there has been a need to provide a lightweight shoulder holster which can retain an automatic handgun which has a retaining system that allows easy and quick access to the handgun in proper orientation for its use.